Easy Life?

Can life just get routine? Living on a boat in the Caribbean. Just taking it easy every day. I think we are there. It’s just so nice here.
Pam and I call it, “The Worm Syndrome” When Pam and I were very young we use to go fishing a lot. It was something we could do that didn’t cost much. It was a 60 mile trip to the lake. We always had and old car that barely ran. On the road to the lake there was a man that sold fish bait. The best you could buy any where and cheaper than any where bait was sold. He would dig the worms right in front of you. He called them fresh worms. He had a house that was falling in, full of kids but it always was a fun place to stop. One day we were there when a over dressed women stopped to get bait for her husband . She ask the man in a rude way if he had all them worm trapped in a tank full of dirt in the ground so they “could not” get away. He said “Lady where do think them worms want to go? I feed them. I keep the dirt wet. If it get too hot or too cold I cover them.” He said again “ Where do you think them worms would want to go?” It is not that bad here yet but it is good here. We are not happy as a worms in manure but we do like it here. Remember we didn’t come down here to live like a lot of people have. We are not pretend cruisers that are here to stay. We are getting ready to go no. Hurricane season is here. This makes us a little nervures sailing away from the safety of the river in Guatemala. . The biggest problem here is the wind. It’s the trade winds. 30 knot from 60 degrees every day and higher at night. The locals say it will lay a little soon. We want to go on to Guanaja. If it doesn’t lay some I don’t think we are going on that a way. Not taking a old designed schooner in to a 30 knot winds and 12 foot seas. A cruiser I know, when he found out we were waiting on the season where the wind drops some said “What did you build your boat for?” I told him. “To have Fun!” I don’t feel the need to prove we can make it. We did that coming to Utila. Before day light to after dark just to make 44 miles. Rusty our cat found a hold he likes when he is not happy and stayed in there till we had the hook down. The days maybe getting routine but there are little things that make the days good. Like the wild life. Humming birds and lizards. Frigate birds and iguanas every where. You can always go over to the mangroves and watch land crabs. If you look down there is always a barracuda under our boat in the water clear as a pool. We have a few thing we need to do to our boat. If I can make myself do it. Now that is hard down here. Work will mess up and easy day. I stay away from it as much as I can. We will go on in a few weeks, Roatan has not trapped us yet but I am afraid the Caribbean as a whole maybe has.

We are just waiting for them to get ripe

Local Kids

Lizard visit 9pm

French Harbor Pics

 

 

Everyone gathers around the Veggie Truck

Best eggs on the island

 

Two guys looking for a handout

Shopping

We are still at the dock at Brooksy Point Marina, French Harbor Honduras. We don’t know when we will be leaving. Pam is ready to leave now. She wants to go back out on the hook “but not here“. The anchoring here is poor. Go see more of the Bay Islands. The biggest reason to stay here is the big modern grocery store here. You can buy meat cut by a butcher here. In most of Central America when you by meat it’s cut off the bone in a chunk by any one that can hold a knife and then sliced in thin slices. We have more I want to do on the boat if we stay a little longer. For all of you that don’t know what its like living on a boat . There is always a list of thing to do. This is why a lot of boats come back after a long tour in bad shape. Why some people just come back to the states to work on their boat and then leave again. Labor is cheep in all of Central America but as a Mexican said. When we told him he could get it done cheaper there by the locals. He said. “You pay in peanuts and you get monkeys.” We made him a nice top and looked around and he was right. The workmanship we saw was poor. Most workmanship here is poor. It’s hard to find what you need to do a good job down here. We went shopping here this week. I needed some more shorts. All of mine are showing signs of who I am. I have epoxy and varnish on most of what I own. Shopping can be fun. There is some stores that look like the U S but most are little shops like you see in a flea market. Every thing you do in them is up close and personal. If you want shorts and they don’t have what you want. If you stay there a few more minutes a kid will come running up with more shorts out of breath. They have sent them running home to a neighbors’ house or some where to get something to sell you. Remember this. You can never take any thing back. If you find something wrong or for any reason. You can never take any thing back. Most of these stores are run by women. It’s hard to make people back in the states believe just how little some of the women are.

They have there babies near by so if you get nervous like I do with beautiful women breast feeding babies. You have been warned. I like how personal it is shopping at one of these little shops. You don’t like the price. Tell them and the game is on. They are all ways eating something. I don’t speak Spanish but I can say. “What is that?” ( “Que es eso?”) Most of the time they will take the time to show you how to eat some really strange stuff. Put me in the hospital in Mexico. Pam is always on me for eating what they hand me unwashed. Most of it. I would not buy in a store to eat. I will spend my money on more tastier things but I love to try and see if I like it. We were in a store and they were eating a bean looking thing. So we tried it. It has a bean in side . The bean is covered with a shin that is white and fuzzy about 1/8 in thick. It’s sweet. The bean its’ self taste like a big raw bean.

The people in most of Central America are small and always clean. This makes shopping a little harder for me. It’s hard for me to stay clean in light colored clothes that don’t fit a man 6 foot tall. They are always friendly. Maybe twice I have been waited on and they were slow to wait on me in all the time we have been down here. Never have I had any one to be rude to me but I don’t know how to shop. If you shop where the locals shop even a vegetable stand can be intimating. I don’t know what to buy. Is this a banana or a plantain? Do I just eat it or do I cook it? What are these things and how do you cook them? Try saying all of that with bad Spanish. Maybe it’s the things that we have never seen or seeing what we can get with my bad Spanish. What ever it is. We are loving it.

Some Things on Roatan

 

‘WOW IT”S HEAVY”

Strange Lizard

Monkeys live free at the Fantasy Island Resort

The monkeys will take food from you. But be careful they will steal also.

Reef!!

Another week in paradise. We are still in Roatan Honduras. A lot of the boats that stay in the Western Caribbean have left already. There is only maybe ten boats in the anchorage here at French Harbor. There has been some boats that went on to Panama. They will stay some where down there for the dreaded hurricane season. A lot have gone to Belize so they can be close to the river in Guatemala. “The Rio Dulce.” But most have already gone up the river. We are going to stay here a little longer and see more of the Bay Islands but we have the Pamela Ann ready. So we can run for it if a storm starts forming . Let me make this very clear. We would never go to sea to ride out a storm. “Never!” We will stay here and take our chances if it gets to close to run but if we have time. We too will go for the Rio. We don’t get much information down here but I saw on the marina TV here this week that the US Coast Guard determined that the loss of the Bounty was the captain’s fault for taking the old sailing ship on further out to sea instead of trying to finding shelter to ride out a hurricane. We were in Key West when it happened and it was sad. All the schooner captains knew the ship and its’ captain. We were there with all the old schooners that work there with the Pamela Ann. I think most of the captains came at some time we were there to see our little schooner and Pam was proud to show her off. I have heard a lot of people say what they would do if they were in control of a boat or a ship in a storm. I don’t like having to make the final call but some times you just have to. We have been in 13 hurricanes,4 tropical depressions and a blizzard. The blizzard was in a tractor trailer truck in Canada. Not long ago I heard a man say that if you know how to anchor you will never drag. You hear a lot from yacht people that have just bought a boat say. With all the equipment we have now you are not much of a captain if you run aground. And there is always the experts on the dock when you come in to a new place docking your boat there the first time. Dealing with currents and wind. For all of you that don’t know me, I have run aground . We have drug and the docking thing, well let’s say some of it has not been really pretty. I feel for the captain of the Bounty and he did go down with his ship. There is great honor in that. Fighting to the end to save your ship. Sadly this week a nice boat ran up on the reef here and of course the talk was how why and what they should have done. Two days it stayed there before a really big power boat got it off. They took it to the dock where the big power boat came from. I can only guess money will change hands before it leaves that dock.

On the Reef

When we got here we put out two anchor. One drug the other held so we swing up to close to another boat. We decided to move and when we finally got the anchors up I went to go to a better place when some one on the radio said. You are getting in some skinny water. I ran aground. We backed up with out much trouble. The first week here and every body new I am “not” a magazine captain. You know the ones you read about that are just perfect. The closer we come to leaving again. The more I realize just how real it is out here. We love being here. There is so much to see This week we went to a fire dance on the beach thing. We wanted to see what that was like. It’s at one of the resorts here. We went with a guest staying at the resort. They had a man doing tricks with glass balls about 3 inch in size . He was good but the dancing around the fire, beach thing was. They try and get you to dance around a fire on the beach. Beautiful night great beach a nice fire but I don’t dance. The wild life here is great and I am not talking about the beach people.

Good Light Show

Fire Dancing

On Fantasy Island they have some monkeys over there running lose. There is an iguana farm near by with no fence to keep them in so we have lots of iguanas. Lots of humming birds and of course chickens. The best grocery store in the Western Caribbean is here. We are safe here so why are we getting ready to go soon. It’s what we haven’t seen and what may be out there that is begging us to come see. We are about ready to go again and see what is out there. With our little home built schooner Her little VW car motors for back up if the wind don’t blow and cut off baseball bats welded a top off her top mast.
Sailing white knuckled but happy and Smiling. “We are going on.”

Internet???

We are still in French Harbor Honduras counting down the days before our dock rent runs out. We are paid up for a few more weeks then we are planning to go back to cruising. We helped the dock owner do some things for the rent. Last week we tried to put on our blog a video of some of the local music here. We didn’t get it to work. We will try again soon. We love it. It’s mostly black people singing old country or old rock and roll. Sometimes in English sometimes in Spanish. We love the way it sounds. It is so smooth. We are sorry for the hit and miss with the internet lately. We hope we can get our blog on every week now. Remember we are on and island in Honduras. Things work here on island time. You learn to be happy if its works at all. We are still eating steak even if it cost us about twice what we pay in the states. This is about the only place we have found steak this good in 2 years.

This is inside Eldon’s where we buy our steaks

When people say you can live in Central America cheaper than you can in the US. “Remember this. “No you can’t“. Not if you try to live any way like we do back in the states. Drinking water is a lot higher. Electricity is way higher and anything that is shipped in is a lot higher. So why do people say that all the time? Some things are cheaper maybe if you hire a house keeper. Manual labor is cheap here. Maybe sometimes you just think it’s cheaper the way you have to buy stuff. Like when you buy meat you buy it sliced very thin. When you have a little pork with your beans and rice. You have a little pork. Almost no one has a washer machine. You wash your clothes by hand and Pam even has ringer. Almost no one has an air conditioner. You are lucky if you have a good fan. You can live very cheap if you anchor out “eat beans and rice” like most of the locals do “ever meal”. There is a lot of people coming here to see Roatan but you don’t see them. They come in on the air lines and large cruise ships.

One of the cruise ships that come here

Then there is a bus there to take them to a resorts that are “gated” with people there to keep them busy. They stay there till the bus takes them back. If you go to a town like Coxen’s Hold you won’t see but a few tourist. Maybe none. We came south to see this land and its’ people so we love going to town. We have gotten use to how thing work down here but sometimes it can get trying if you are trying do something. This week a doctor from Austria ask me to help him install an new auto pilot. They spoke German and very good English. We needed a few bolts so we went to and Ace Hardware that is famous for being down here on the island. The only one for hundred of sea miles. In fact the only one maybe down here in Central America for many a miles. It looks like and Ace Hardware but inside you can tell they have more than a lot of hardware stores down here but no where close to what you can find in the states. I ask for some ¼ x 20 SS bolts and they had some but like it is down here. No nuts to go with them. I said “ Okay give me 5/16. They said they had some too long but I could cut them off but the only nuts they had were very expensive locking nuts. We took them because that was more than any other places would have. We ask about fiber glass cloth and they said only matting so we went to another place. They only had mat also but they sold us some resin that looked good in a used Coke Cola bottle with the harder in a little old 35mm film container. You had to keep it setting up or it would leak. I am getting almost use to getting just something that will work but almost never what I go after. We tried to find tinned boat wire but settled on just stranded copper wire. I think I maybe adjusting to island time because you learn not to worry about how long its takes to do something. When it comes to doing most things. If it’s not real important it probably just “cost too much” to do anyway. Maybe what is important here today is weather, the veggie truck that comes by. Will they have potatoes or not. Will the radio station be playing good old country music or rap and stay on the air till 9:00 or will they just decide to go home at 8”00? Will the wind blow all night or will it stop before daylight and it will be too hot to sleep. If we need something will we maybe try and find a ride tomorrow to town just before lunch. because most places don’t open till after 10. If we find something to work with. Will we come back and go to work are maybe we will just wait and go to work the next day in the morning when its cooler. The most used word in Central America and you need to know here is “Manana” Manana is tomorrow in Spanish but here in “all” of Central America it “always” means. “It’s not happening today so just take it easy.” If you live your life in a hurry this is no place to be. So why do we love it so. I am not sure but it maybe because life here is simple. There is always something new to see and there is always the water. If you get tired of some place or someone just go somewhere else. Most of the places here in Central America are on island time. Most have things that are different. Thing to see. Last night we went out on the beach here and sat for a while in the little moon light we had and all I could think of was. “We are finally here“. After all the years of dreaming and all the years of building the boat. This may not be the right place for every body but I wish we could share this place with all that read our blog but we know we can’t. Reading about the Caribbean is not like being here but maybe someday you can come here and see for yourselves. For all that know me. Slowing down is not a hard thing for me and where we are planning to go next we have been told it is even slower. I think I can handle even slower. We will see.

Friends of ours we first met in Mexico and we have been in 4 countries together